Burning in the Skies
by Dragon of Dispair
Summary: WFC Dark!Praxus AU - Megatron wasn't the first leader of the Decepticons, in so far as they could be said to have had a leader before Megatron.


Fandoms: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: War for Cybertron, Transformers Generation One

Warnings: None

Characters: OC centric

Tags: Alternate Universe, Cannon-typical Violence, Politics. Debates, Rebellion, NPC Deaths, Headcannon, Worldbuilding

Summary: WFC Dark!Praxus AU - Megatron wasn't the first leader of the Decepticons, in so far as they could be said to have had a leader before Megatron.

Dark!Praxus Au series order (at the time of writing this and subject to change):

1 - Sin City (In Progress)

2 - What Happens in Praxus

3 - Gambler's Fallacy (forthcoming)

4 - Burning In the Skies

5 - Winning Hand (forthcoming and won't be posted until Gambler's Fallacy is finished even if I write it before that, title subject to change)

6 - Cities in Dust (part six of the Livejournal Prompt Responses)

7 - The Gambler

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 **Burning In the Skies**

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 _I'm swimming in the smoke_

 _Of bridges I have burned_

— Linkin Park _"Burning in the Skies"_

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Kaon was nothing like Praxus.

Praxus was a city of glittering spires, neon lights and the endless search for dreams come true through the endless threads of chance, addiction and corporate misconduct. Corruption ran through the heart blood of its economy, but for every hundred bots caught and enslaved in its webs of crushing debt, there were a few dozen (like Smokescreen, last Bluelight had seen him) who navigated the system to stay relatively free. And every so often one bot would not just strike it rich in the casinos, but manage to use those winnings to rip free of the webs and live a life of their choosing.

Kaon… was dirty, inside and out. No false pretenses for tourists here; just a city drowning in its own filth. Grime coated every surface. Smog clogged the streets. No one looked up into the blank grey clouds of industrial smoke; there was nothing to see. The whole city stank of apathy and pollution, miners and factory workers so worn down by the drudgery of their existence they literally couldn't care about anything but the energon they were going to buy with their next meager wages. Even the bosses were poor and dirty and only slightly better off than the drudges they lorded over.

And yet, here he was, in a relatively nice living space, well-fed and still Praxus-shiny. His caste had guaranteed him a job as a factory inspector for the Cybertronian council. His duty was to tour the factories, note down any safety violations and report back. Already factory bosses had tried both bribery and threats and he'd become something of a minor hero for not bowing to either. Of course when bribing him didn't work, the bosses bribed Kaon's senator not to do anything about the violations, but Senators were so much harder to impress with credits than middle-caste lawyers. So occasionally, when it was cheaper to do so, the bosses cleaned up a bit. Never much, but it was tangible evidence to Bluelight of what could be accomplished by someone who was just trying to help.

And that was just half of it. Apathy might swaddle the city in layers of thick indifference above the surface, but beneath it, if you went far enough into the bowels of the city, Kaon seethed. Frustration crawled through the sewers like lava. Here, graffiti burned scathing poetry in layers almost as thick as the grime. Most of that frustration was pulled into Kaon's infamous gladiatorial matches and released in the cheering of the crowd, but some of it puddled and pooled and eventually flowed into other outlets.

It was here he found the Decepticons. The _real_ Decepticons, not the pretenders in Praxus.

The first time he'd come down here he'd been nervous and when the giant war build had loomed out of the shadows behind him, he'd become outright panicked. He, with his Praxus-shiny plating and his clear, bright biolights didn't belong in Kaon, much less in this dark frustration-fueled underworld. In fact he rather felt like he had a target painted on him. But every time he came down here, he arrived without mishap.

"Here" was a hidden room beneath the city, far from the usual traffic patterns where the most dedicated Decepticons in Kaon came to plot the downfall of modern civilization. That was the other major difference between Praxus and Kaon. In Praxus, the Decepticons (what there were of them) operated openly. Jobs could be threatened, but not lives. Not directly, and only a direct threat would stop the believers and the thrill seekers. They met in cafes and churches and theaters and the police mostly ignored them. In PPP's own words to the senate: "You aren't paying us to police mechs' thoughts; you aren't paying us at all. Bugger off." If you knew how to look for the signs, anymech could find a Decepticon-aligned meeting place and walk in to hear the poetry and the essays and discuss what changes needed to be made. And in Praxus, everyone, high-caste and low, had the sort of grievances that might lead a 'bot to do so. But at the end of the night, everyone went back to the their homes and their jobs and their online gaming accounts and whatever fervor for change they possessed would be buried by their next minor victory at Insecticon Wars. In Kaon they needed to hide everything they did, vary their meeting times and places and publish their essays in complete anonymity, but the fervor remained, simmering in the frustration of being caste-locked, boiling in substandard energon, bubbling free on the miners' one orn off in thirty.

Right now their focus was on recruitment. Coming from Praxus, where caste was much less an indicator of status than it was on the rest of Cybertron, Bluelight was one of the highest caste members of the fledgling revolution and all of them recognized that if a non-violent restructuring of the status quo was to succeed they needed lawyers and lobbyists and archivists, secretaries, artists, buisnessmechs… even senators.

They didn't always agree, but that was one of the pitfalls of allowing every member an equal chance to speak. Worth it, in Bluelight's opinion.

"It doesn't matter _how_ many lawyers and lobbyists we recruit. They're never going to listen to us. The upper castes are sitting fat and happy on our backs and until they're gone they'll never let us out from under their yokes!" Chromeheart practically snarled. "Publishing _books_ isn't doing anything to make them listen to us!"

Alarmingly, a murmur of agreement went around the circle or miners and factory workers. Some of them were the writers and poets who'd actually founded the Decepticons as a movement. Bluelight stood to issue his rebuttal and Chromeheart ceded the floor in accordance with the informal rules of the circle but did not sit back down. As such Bluelight chose to address him directly, rather than the circle as a whole.

"What am I? Chopped ore-scrap?" A titter of laughter rose and fell as he'd intended. "Maybe you'd have preferred to have continued to dig through tunnels with no structural support for the last five vorns? Or in complete darkness? Those lights aren't much I admit. They aren't enough. I haven't been able to make much of a true difference, but I'm only one person." He swept his gaze around the dirty forms of the other Decepticons and was once again keenly aware of his clean and shiny plating versus the accumulated grit of a lifetime at hard labor the others sported. " _I_ was swayed by poetry and books. I was one of a team of lawyers who lobbied my corporation's interests directly to the Praxus city council; in another decade I would have been the _head_ of that team, but because of what _you have written_ , I left that to come and do my best to make sure your bosses were forced to install lights and supports and guardrails and any number of tiny changes. And in many cases I've managed to do exactly that. It's not enough; it will never be enough, _but I'm only one mech_. There are others like me, if only we can reach them."

Again a murmur of agreement went around the circle and Chromeheart snarled. "So where are they? It's all well and good to hold yourself up as an example of compassion in the upper castes, but where _is_ this league of mechs would would actually take up our cause? Where are those of your caste who would make any sort of sacrifice for us?"

 _Smokescreen would_ , Bluelight thought. _Maybe_. But he'd learned a long time ago that Praxus was an entirely different beast than Kaon. _Maybe not_. Smokescreen championed individuals, not causes, and he enjoyed flirting the line between risk and reward that defined life in Praxus for those who were relatively free. Smokescreen's young police friend, Arui… Bluelight had only met him once, before he'd found the Decepticons in Praxus, but as soon as he'd been sure Bluelight wasn't going to report him to PPP internal affairs, he'd been full of not-quite-complaints about the company that owned him. He'd been sparked to help people and the corruption of the system had interfered with that.

"Maybe we just aren't getting our message to them. I went looking for those who were like-minded and I happened to be from Praxus where presence in the room where Decepticon poetry is being performed isn't cause for arrest. _And_ in a position to quickly pay off my debts and come here. I know some — police mechs even —" that caused a stir; here in Kaon the police were the definite enemies of all things Decepticon, "who would if they had the knowledge and capability. I've never been anywhere but Kaon and Praxus, so I cannot say what sort of obstacles must be overcome to bring them to our cause. Who among us knows if the archivists of Iacon or the artists of Protihex are even hearing our message. We should not assume a lack of response thus far is synonymous with a lack of compassion."

Bluelight was a lawyer, sparked and trained, and public speaking was the hallmark of his caste. Right now he held the other Decepticons the same way he'd hold a courtroom with a receptive judge and jury. He was right, he knew it and he knew his audience believed it, he just had to convince them his opponent had no argument. Chromeheart was not a public speaker trained, but he had mastered his words with all the ruthlessness of a poet whose verse could get him killed. "We have plenty of recruits from those cities. Our writing has been carried there and ignored by the upper castes. The _Senate_ knows about us; how can those below them _not!_ "

"The Senate knows because us we threaten their status quo — that doesn't mean they, or any other caste has had the opportunity to read our works! We pass our data pads hand to hand, from miner to transport mech to dockworker. Tell me," he once again addressed the gathering as a whole rather than simply Chromeheart, "if _I_ were not standing before you, would any of you here — or _anyone you know!_ — have ever spoken to one of the lawyer caste?"

With that Bluelight had won the argument, he could tell that most of the gathered Decepticons agreed with what he said. Chromeheart at least had the grace to accept when he was defeated. "Then what do you propose? How do we reach potential recruits from those castes? Because if, as you say, those mechs are ignorant of our plights, not indifferent, then even I can admit that now might not be the time to discuss a violent revolution."

"That's what we're here to discuss, isn't it?"

And discuss it they did.

Eventually a consensus of sorts was reached. No one, not even the Senate itself, spoke to the whole of Cybertron like the information castes did. The archivists and reporters and cultural investigators and propaganda crafters.

Next time a cultural investigator or investigative reporter was rumored to be in Kaon, Bluelight would approach him and test the oils. If he thought it was worth the risk, they'd arrange a meeting at a disposable meeting site where they'd pass on their writings. Hopefully from there they would spread. Even if they weren't trumpeted across the news stations to all of Cybertron in an instant, it would be a gateway to the other castes, without which they would always be just a collection of discontented low-caste rabble.

They were debating the virtues of approaching a cultural investigator versus a reporter, when — "KAON POLICE! You're all under arrest for seditious activities and treason. Surrender now!" — the barricaded doors of their hidden meeting place were kicked in.

Most of them panicked.

Civilians weren't supposed to have weapons… but when so many fought the occasional bout in the arenas to take advantage of the medical check ups they got afterwards, to say nothing of the prize money… Bluelight didn't see who fired the first shot, police or protestor.

Then he, and most of the Decepticons gathered there, knew nothing ever again.

That was the night the Senate, in a secret unpublicized session, officially outlawed the Decepticon movement and called for the immediate arrest of all members of the movement.

The voices for a moderate Decepticon movement mostly died in those police raids, but the movement itself didn't. Too many of its members were on-shift in factories and mines or driving the long routes of a dedicated transport mech, or they were taking what time they had for recharge. As an organization, the Decepticons kept no records, cared nothing for each others' names or their castes or even their ability to craft the verses that were so valuable to the movement. Those taken alive couldn't point their interrogators to their fellow conspirators, even when hacked. Many, many mechs were overlooked. They went into hiding, but never gave up their allegiance.

And the next mech to speak so eloquently to them was not advocating changing people's minds through poetry.

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End

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Note: Wondering why I care enough to write this about the fate of an OC I literally used a random name generator to create? Answer's in my Smokescreen-centric fic of this series _Sin City_.


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